


headhunter

by wyverary



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Family Issues, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Introspection, Post-Season/Series 03, Trauma, also the very specific atmosphere of 7-eleven at night, implied bi nancy blink n you’ll miss it, is this too long to be a one shot idk, that raw feeling when you hate the people who hurt you but still miss them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-09 14:29:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19889362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyverary/pseuds/wyverary
Summary: "Ask a headhunter why he cuts off human heads. He’ll say that rage impels him and rage is born of grief. The act of severing and tossing away the victim’s head enables him to throw away the anger of all his bereavements." - Anne Carson, Tragedy: A Curious Artform (preface from Grief Lessons)Max grieves. It doesn't make sense.





	headhunter

**Author's Note:**

> i know nobody cares abt gen fics but i had some thoughts about max post s3 so this is some highly indulgent max introspection based a lot on my own experiences (bc when is it not) with grief and abuse and having friends (and crushes) move away suddenly & what can i say its all very valid of me
> 
> a lot of this is based on the info from the canon novel runaway max, which i HIGHLY recommend if u love max as much as i do just bc theres so much insight on her character & her backstory that i wish had been explored more in the show lol, plus i just thought it was written pretty well anyway, but like spoilers 4 that i guess

Summer had been going well. Really, really well. Billy had left her alone since November, for the most part. He wasn’t _pleasant_ to be around, but he’d cooled it a bit, reserving his antagonism for when he really needed to let off some steam. Better than hearing it around the clock. True, things at home weren’t much better otherwise, but it almost didn’t matter when she was spending all hours of the day with her friends. 

Friends. It felt nice to say, after spending so many lonely hours pretending she didn’t mind kicking her board around on the side of the street all by herself. It _had_ felt nice. Before. Now? It felt empty. 

The reason Max spent so much time with guys wasn’t because she hated girls. It was more like she didn’t know how to make girls like _her_. It was easier to repulse girls than boys with the abrasive way she tended to be. She figured it would be the same with El, but then it wasn’t. She really admired El, and El actually seemed to like her, too, and then she was gone, only Max’s scrunchie to remember her by. When El and the Byers had finally pulled out in the moving truck, Max almost slid her bright red sunglasses back on so nobody could see her fighting back tears. Did that make sense, to shed tears over a girl she hadn’t known longer than a couple months?

So there she was, sitting alone in Billy’s room with one dim light on, the afternoon sunlight seeping from the uncovered part of the window like a wound. If you asked why she’d ended up there, she couldn’t tell you. She’d biked home from the Byers’ old place with an ache in her throat as Dustin and Lucas peeled off toward the Sinclair house. When she got back to the house on Cherry Lane, she’d let herself in and noticed Billy’s door ajar, probably from her mom or Neil packing up his things. With nobody to yell at her, she’d slipped in and taken a seat on the bed. Thinking. It didn’t feel fair, to be losing so much in so little time. 

Max never thought she was the type to look into dreams too much. They just never made enough sense for her to reliably parse out a deeper meaning, and that was fine with her. Lately, though, her dreams struck a sharp chord with her waking life. She saw her friends, sometimes, but mostly she saw Billy. Maybe a year ago those dreams would’ve mostly had to do with being chased or attacked, and she would try not to think about it, but it would still make a sort of sense. Now, though, she would just see him, one person among a revolving cast of people acting out random, even dull, visions. Every time, she would wake up feeling sick and confused. Not about why she was seeing him there, but why she wasn’t running from him, why she could look at his hard-set face without feeling angry and trapped. You’re supposed to hate the people who hurt you. You’re not supposed to grieve them. 

WAM! The silence was shattered as the front door slammed behind Neil. Max knew it was Neil because her mom never slammed the door shut. 

“Maxine? You home?”

Being in Billy’s room had never made her feel especially comfortable, but as Neil passed by the door and spotted her she was suddenly even more aware of how much she didn’t belong in here. 

“Maxine, what the hell are you doing?” Neil was technically a security guard, not a cop, but his voice still barked with that same violent urgency.

Shooting up from her sitting position, Max made for the door. “Nothing, sorry.”

But he didn’t move out of her way.

Neil had made it clear back in July exactly who he held responsible for Billy’s death, even if he knew he was missing the gritty details. Max’s mom had mostly been able to talk him down from his angrier moments, but she wasn’t here right now.

“You’re gonna tell me _right now_ what you were doing in here, do you understand me?”

“Nothing, I swear!” said Max, backing away from the doorway and avoiding his eyes. 

“Do I look like an idiot?” 

Max felt like her head was floating off of her shoulders. “No—”

“Do you think because Susan lets you off easy you can take that punkass attitude with me?”

“I wasn’t doing anything, I was just sitting—”

“Don’t lie to me, young lady!”

“Hey, look, I’m leaving, okay?” Max tried to skirt around him and make her getaway, but she’d only just made it past him when she felt a vice-like grip on her arm.

“If I _ever_ catch you in here again, there’ll be consequences, got that?”

She wanted to say something smart, something that let her feel like she’d had the last word, but all she managed to say was, “Got it.”

Yanking her arm away, Max turned and strode down the hall and out the front door, grabbing her bike and setting off once again. 

At least she wasn’t crying anymore.

* * *

Back in July, if things had gone wrong at home, all Max would have to do was radio the rest of the Party and see if anyone was down to hang out. The walkie-talkie had been Lucas’ Christmas gift to her—the first gift of many, it seemed. It was October, now. Calling everyone up was out of the question, considering the way they’d spent most of the day together already helping the Byers and El pack up. So Max just biked lazily through town, waiting for something to catch her eye.

Now that Starcourt was gone, Hawkins had gone back to the way it was before, almost. Everything that wasn’t a restaurant pretty much closed by sunset, and everything that was a restaurant didn’t stay open much later than 9:30. Looking back, Max felt like there’d always been something to do in San Diego if she hadn’t wanted to go home. Here, she was left to her own devices. 

At some point in her wandering, the sun slipped beneath the horizon and her stomach started to rumble, and the only place she knew she could afford with her pocket change was the 7-Eleven by the main road out of town. 

The Hawkins 7-Eleven was a small, lonely brick building in a lot off the road with a couple picnic tables scattered around it and nobody inside, about as unassuming as a glowing little building east of Kokomo could get. Or so she’d heard. Still, no matter where she was, 7-Eleven at night was a vastly different experience than 7-Eleven in the daytime. 

The girl at the counter seemed to think so, too.

“Nancy?”

Nancy grimaced a little, but smiled all the same. “Hi, Max.”

“Do you work here?”

“Yep.”

“...cool.”

Before the awkwardness could grow, Max rushed off to the other side of the store to peruse the aisles.

Nancy had seemed _amazing_ to Max ever since last November, but they didn’t know each other that well. Nancy was off in her own world of pretty sweaters and college applications and none of that intersected with Max’s world at all. Sometimes she saw her when they all hung out in Mike’s basement, but far be it for a 16 year old to hang out with a bunch of middle schoolers. And then the Byers had left, and she’d been there to see them off, but she’d been there for Jonathan, not Will or El. She couldn’t help but feel like she was missing out on something by not knowing Nancy. 

She didn’t try to make conversation as Nancy rang up her soda and her bag of chips. If Nancy was judging her healthy choice of dinner, she didn’t make any indication. Max didn’t feel judged, anyway. Not while Nancy was wearing that hideous orange-spotted uniform. She was handing over a bill when the door chimed and two figures walked in, laughing hard enough to wheeze. Their laughter trailed off as their eyes took in the people in front of them. 

It was Steve and...that girl. From the mall. 

Max hadn’t thought it could get any more awkward than before, but there they were.

“Nancy...didn’t know you worked here,” said Steve.

Nancy looked _thrilled_. “Yeah, I...kinda got fired from the Post, so.”

“Yeesh, that sucks.”

Steve’s friend took that opportunity to pipe up. “Yeah, we kinda lost our jobs, too. After the mall closed, and all. If it helps.”

“You know? It doesn’t,” said Nancy, smiling in that way that made her seem like she was about to snap.

“Actually, though, we’re here to celebrate,” said Steve. “We both got hired at the video store today.”

Max snorted. “Some celebration.”

Steve looked at her, as if just noticing she was there. “Max? Aren’t you out a little late?”

“Uh…” She shrugged and held up her snacks. “Dinner.”

Steve and the girl raised their eyebrows at each other, concerned. 

“Dinner?” said the girl, looking back at Max.

If there was one thing Max didn’t need right now, it was pity from someone she didn’t even know. “I’m not sharing.”

And with that she walked out of the store and found herself a picnic table. The last traces of the sun turned the sky pinkish along the horizon, officially signalling the start of the evening. Everything else around her looked like it’d been dyed a deep blue. Sighing, Max sipped her coke and popped open her bag of chips and tried not to think about going home. 

Only a few minutes and a couple chips later, Steve and the girl left the store. They stopped to look around before spotting Max’s table and making their way over. Great. 

“I told you I’m not sharing.”

It was the girl who spoke up. “We’re not here to steal your food, I promise. I’m Robin. From Scoops?”

“I remember.”

“Anyway, we wanted to make sure you’re okay, just ‘cause dinner seems to be a little scant tonight.”

Max shrugged. “I’m fine. You can go home.” 

“That’s not how this works, Max,” said Steve, taking a seat across from her. “Is something wrong?”

“A lot of things are wrong, when you think about it.”

“Is something wrong with _you_.”

“Depends on how you look at it, I guess,” said Max. She felt her mouth tilt up in a smirk, but it felt hollow, like wearing a doll’s face. What was that Beatles lyric, about the lady with her face in a jar by the door…

Steve was about to respond, when Robin stepped up and took a seat at the table next to him. “At least let Steve drive you home or something. We’re not gonna force you to spill your guts, but we’re not gonna leave you here, either.”

“I think we all know what kinds of things happen to kids alone at night in Hawkins by now,” added Steve.

On another day, Max could’ve maybe kept up the fight until they gave up, but today just wasn’t that day. Today, her friends were fractured and her family was a bomb waiting to go off. Secrets were for people with something to hope for.

“Will and El are gone,” she said simply.

Steve and Robin looked surprised they’d actually gotten through to her. Then just...confused.

“Gone?” said Steve.

Max scoffed. “What, did no one tell you? They all left. For somewhere kids can safely bike home at night, I guess.”

“Oh, shit, yeah, I heard they were moving. Just didn’t realize that was _today_.”

“That...really sucks,” said Robin.

“Yeah.” Max could feel her face heating up again with the urge to cry, so she stuffed a handful of chips in her mouth. It felt good to crunch them loudly, with nobody to scold her or tell her to be polite and quiet. 

For a bit, that was all there was, just the sounds of crunching and the background night ambience of crickets and whatever else was rustling about in the surrounding bushes. Then, Steve spoke up.

“Y’know, that ride home is still on the table.”

“I think I’ll pass. ‘Home’ will probably be just fine without me.”

That was the wrong thing to say, as Steve and Robin quickly grew concerned.

“What do you mean, Max?” asked Steve.

Where Steve seemed almost determined to get to the bottom of things, Robin was mostly just plain sympathetic. “I know you don’t know us that well, but I promise we just wanna help.”

“Yeah, what are you gonna do, start a fight with my stepdad?” Dimly Max was aware of that voice in her brain warning her that she was walking that border between sarcasm and cruelty, the one Billy crossed fairly regularly. Maybe that voice was what she was _really_ mad at. “Last I heard, Steve, you’ve got a record of about _one win_ against some Russian radio lackey.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m just saying, if you got your ass handed to you by Billy, you haven’t got a chance against Neil,” she bit out.

“Whoa, hey, let’s calm down a little, yeah?” said Robin. Both of the older teens looked more shocked with each thing she said, but Max couldn’t keep her big mouth shut.

“Fuck you. You don’t know anything about me! What makes you think you can help?”

“Maybe if you could just tell us—”

“Maybe it’s _none of your business!_ ” yelled Max. And with that she drained the rest of her soda and smashed the glass bottle against the side of the nearby bricks. The broken pieces clattering to the ground made a pretty sound, but the violence didn’t make the pain go away like she’d hoped. She didn’t feel any less screwed-up. 

Vaguely, in the distance, she heard the door chime and Nancy rush out to ask what was going on. The voice in her head was drowned out by something that felt a lot like a swarm of wasps rushing through her body, heaving with the need to _inflict_. It was only after a couple seconds of unsatisfied stasis that she realized she’d started crying, and the fight extinguished. Slowly she walked back over to the table and slumped into the seat, burying her head in her arms, painfully aware this was all happening for an audience of three now. 

The dreamy fluorescent light coming from the building didn’t make her feel much more grounded. She didn’t feel anything, really. Not the tears leaving tracks on her face or the chill of the night air as it swept by. She just felt alone, in a way that grated against her like sandpaper until it turned numb. 

“Max,” Nancy said calmly, taking a seat at the table next to a bewildered Robin and Steve. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She didn’t, at all, but after an outburst like that she figured she didn’t have much of a choice. the gentle way Nancy could talk reminded her of her mom, a little. A version of her mom that wasn’t living in a glass case with a pin through her ribcage.

Max heaved a sigh. “My mom’s not a very assertive person. So when Neil muscled his way into our lives, she didn’t exactly stop him. Or Billy.”

Nancy’s expression had turned worried, her big doe eyes wide and bright like the headlights on a Jeep. “Is he hurting you? Has he _been_ hurting you?”

“The short version is Neil blames me for Billy being...gone. And he’s not exactly hurting me, but he’s made it pretty clear it’s on the table.”

“Billy was his golden child, huh?” asked Steve, rolling his eyes.

Max scoffed. “Not even. It’s like he picked the perfect time to start giving a shit about him.”

Steve blinked, surprised.

“I feel like the only time I’ve ever actually understood Billy is now that he’s gone,” said Max. “When you understand something, do you become it?”

All three of the older teens had sad eyes trained on her when she looked up to face them. She’d curbed the tears by now, but she couldn’t imagine it made her less pathetic.

“No, _god_ , of course you don’t,” Robin said.

“Yeah, you’re not like him, I promise. You’re not a psychopath,” Steve added. “You’re just...not in the best situation right now.”

Max frowned. She looked down at her chips, lying uneaten on the picnic table. “What’s the difference, Steve? Where’s the line?”

“Max,” Nancy said, reaching across the table to hold her hand. “I don’t pretend I knew Billy very well, but from what I hear he didn’t feel very sorry for anything he did. Even before this past summer he made the choice to hurt a lot of people, and he didn’t ever try and fix the damage.”

Nancy’s eyes briefly flicked over to Steve before settling back on her own.

“Take it from me, kid,” he said, voice weary. “I’ve been where he was, and I’ve known plenty of other people exactly like him. He might’ve had it rough, but in the end the shit he does is his problem. Not yours.”

Nancy’s hand felt warm in Max’s. 

“So why do I care so much that he’s dead?”

Tears started to slip down her face again. The ache in her throat was back, too. Two for the price of one.

“Mourning is...fucking weird,” said Nancy, sniffling a bit. “Emotions can make you do weird shit, frankly.”

“He treated me like crap…”

“I wish any of us could give you a real answer,” Robin said. “But I think Nancy’s right. What matters is what you make a habit of, and who you hang with. He doesn’t have to own you.”

For a minute, Max just squeezed her eyes shut and took in the sound of insects in the October air. She hadn’t even noticed how chilly it had gotten in the past couple minutes, but it was almost soothing on her teary, red face.

“I think...I know that,” she said, opening her eyes. “I don’t know if I have anything else in my life, anymore.”

Steve’s brow furrowed. “What about your friends?”

Max smiled ruefully. “What friends? About a third of them drove off today.”

“What about Dustin? That kid was nuts over you last year.”

“Oh god, don’t remind me.”

All four fought back smiles at that. Few of them succeeded.

“Seriously, though. None of them feel like...my _friends_ anymore. Well, Mike _never_ felt like my friend, but I didn’t really care, ‘cause I had the other guys. And then Lucas and I started dating and I kind of...lost him? And Dustin seemed to think I was cool at first, but we never really got close. ‘Cause he still liked me, I guess.” 

Max paused. “...and then El. She was the first girl who didn’t think I was a lost cause. And then she left, just like that.”

She looked back up at them. “And Will, of course, I’ll miss him, too.”

She said it quickly, like she was trying to make up for something. Her face felt hot. It was like she’d been caught with a hand in the cookie jar; whatever rule she’d been caught breaking didn’t seem like much, but it was embarrassing to be caught out all the same.

Robin studied her for a minute, before responding, “I think I get what you mean.”

Nancy looked over at her and Robin met her eyes and together they shared a mystifying look.

Nancy gaze moved off into space somewhere beyond Max’s head. “I think I do, too.”

Nobody spoke for a while after that. At some point Max took out her braids and let her hair hang loose down her back. A thin trail of ants wove its way into Max’s bag of chips. Maybe a few months ago she would’ve squished the ants without hesitation, but now she just studied them. Sitting still watching them made her skin feel itchy. It was interesting, though, the way they seemed to flow like liquid across the surface of the table in the neon light. Carrying the loads on their backs like their lives depended on it.

San Diego was nothing like Hawkins. It was sunny, and Max never had to wait around for something to happen. It wasn’t slow and boring like most of Indiana had proven to be, monsters aside. One thing she liked better, though, was the stars. She wasn’t really the type to sit and watch them, but they were nice. They were still and peaceful and constant in the middle of a deep blue canvas of sky. There would always be things Max loved about the trashy urban atmosphere. This was more what she needed right now.

Well, enough emotion for one evening. Her face felt absolutely gross. Max got up from the table and began to walk to her bike, then turned. 

“Um, sorry. For getting all weird. And yelling ‘n stuff,” she murmured, looking down at the dirt she was busy toeing with her sneaker.

Steve looked tired, but less uptight than she’d probably ever seen him. “Hey. Anytime, alright?”

“Yeah, seriously, I don’t want you hanging around your shithead stepdad too much,” said Robin, smirking a little. “It’s called disaster prevention and we want to help you practice it.”

Nancy didn’t say anything, but she gave Max a small smile from where she’d stood up from the table to go back inside the store. 

“See ya ‘round.”

And she turned and pedaled down the road.

* * *

It was a really long shot. 

The number could easily be wrong. Neil could easily be listening from somewhere else in the house. The phone could easily be hung up once she said who she was. There might not even be anyone home, and there was no way she’d be allowed to make a second long-distance call in one night.

When she got home that night, as soon as she’d unlocked the door, her mom had gathered her up in her arms and thanked god she was okay. She’d been angry, but she didn’t have it in her to get to the typical scolding. Neil glared at her from his menacing position behind Susan’s back. Max glared right back at him, holding her mom close. Truth be told, she’d considered not even coming home until tomorrow, but the devil you know, right?

In the morning she’d asked for the number, and her mom had given her a look like she suspected she was up to something but dug out her address book anyway and written it down on a post-it. Max had taken the scrap of paper and thanked her and rushed off to her room, with her mom calling after her to remind her not to stay on longer than an hour. 

Per the rules, she’d waited until the evening to call. At least it was earlier in California. 

The phone rang twice after she punched in the number, before picking up on the third. For a second, she wasn’t sure how to start. It’d been well over a year. 

“Hello? Is someone there?”

“Nate?”

“...Who is this?”

She took a deep breath, hoping he wouldn’t hang up on what was once his best friend. “Nate, it’s me. Max.”

“Max. Shit, it’s been a while. You moved, right?”

“Indiana, yeah,” she chuckled. “Sorry to call so late.”

“It’s fine. Really.”

She didn’t mean late at night, and it seemed like he knew that.

“How’s...the arm?”

He paused. 

“Fine,” he said, his voice a little clipped.

“Cool.”

“Is everything okay?” he asked.

She’d wanted to tell him Billy was dead, but it felt like a weird thing to spring on him so soon. “Just...wanted to catch up. I felt bad, that we haven’t talked in so long.”

“No, don’t feel bad. I get that everything got really crazy for you, really fast. I’m...sorry I kinda avoided you.”

“Well, when someone’s evil stepbrother breaks your arm, you’re not gonna wanna keep hanging out with her,” she joked.

He took the olive branch and they moved on.

“So, do you have cool new friends in Indiana?”

She sighed. “It’s funny, actually. A bunch of them just moved away.”

“Dang, that sucks.”

“Yeah. Is it cool if I...tell you about them? One of them?”

“Totally, man.”

“Well, her name’s El…”

**Author's Note:**

> im on tumblr @ miraclerats 
> 
> billy stans dont interact (ppl who sympathize with billy/find him interesting without excusing his actions are ok but ur on thin fucking ice)


End file.
